At the end of his latest column ("Oh, the Humanities," Sept. 28), Charles Clark '12 concludes that Dartmouth students "are spelunkers in a series of academic niches, who ought to be sailing the ocean of human culture," but are instead stifled by a curriculum that fails to "acknowledge the wrongheadedness" of unnecessary academic specialization. As a result of "publish or perish" policies, Clark argues, we are left with useless knowledge about "obscure" topics. His solution: to replace our distribution requirements with a mandatory core curriculum "that would include survey classes in Western and non-Western civilization and literature, philosophy, music and art, writing and oratory."
While there is logic behind this reasoning the relentless demand for new scholarship often requires that professors narrow their research focuses and devote less time to teaching Clark ultimately confounds two worthy, albeit separate issues. First, the specificity of our classes; and second, the value we obtain from taking them. He incorrectly assumes that the utility of a liberal arts education derives more from acquiring knowledge "about many familiar topics" than from honing valuable intellectual skills. Thus, with a dagger aimed at specialization, Clark has instead stabbed the heart of the education he was trying to defend.
A good liberal arts education should be "isomorphic" ("Process, Not Particulars," Sept. 30), meaning that regardless of how it's manifested, its most fundamental components should be the same across any field and any degree of specialization. More important than remembering random facts is learning how to apply and synthesize them, which requires the capacity to read critically, study effectively, extrapolate trends creatively and imagine deeply. Clark is wrong to believe that breadth in any way circumscribes efficacy. In fact, specialized classes often offer benefits that survey courses cannot. The challenge of examining specific subjects in great detail, and the concomitant realization that for all of our effort we still know relatively little about even less, is a very humbling experience.
Because we can learn the same skills no matter how esoteric the topics we study, we have no need for a core curriculum that would invariably be biased, controversial and arbitrary. Mandating that students take specific classes is as much indoctrination as it is education, depriving us of our intellectual curiosity and reducing our chances to focus on what we like most.
None of this is to say that Dartmouth can't improve its curriculum or administrative policies. In fact, I agree with Clark's assertion that the College should do a better job of offering curriculum programs for students who want greater organization and a more traditional focus in their liberal arts education. One easy way to do this would be to institute the curriculum suggested by professor James Murphy as part of the Daniel Webster Project in Ancient and Modern Studies. According to its website, the Webster Project would offer an optional set of humanities, social science and natural science sequences designed to teach students "more about the origins and significance of their own disciplines within the larger context of human culture." Although a similar program at Yale University called Directed Studies already exists, Dartmouth has neither officially reviewed, nor endorsed, nor rejected the Webster Project."
The College could also incentivize intellectual exploration by changing its Non-Recording Option policy. Currently, if a student receives an NR in a class, he cannot use that class to satisfy major or general education requirements. As a result, students concerned about their GPAs tend to take the same easy classes to fulfill their distributions. A policy meant to offer us flexibility in our course choices has been transformed into a rigid framework for getting easy As. Instead of forcing us to make connections between our expertise and more foreign subjects, the current General Education policy impedes investigation and reinforces timid course selection. If students knew that an NR could count towards their distribs, however, more people would ditch Astro 3 for behemoths like "Organic Chemistry" or "Calculus of Several Variables." The obvious objection to changing the NRO policy is simple: students who NRO classes tend not to work as hard and therefore don't learn as much. But my solution is equally simple: change NRO eligibility so that only people earning at least a B- can use it for distribs.
College President Jim Yong Kim is fond of declaring that Dartmouth offers the "best undergraduate education in the world." Yet the recent discourse on these Opinion pages indicates that some students disagree. Hopefully he's been listening.
